Dearest Sister . . . Love, Jackie

Conversations And Correspondence With The Late Sister Parish Tell The Inside Story Of Jacqueline Kennedy's White House Restoration

January 07, 1996|By Christopher Petkanas. Special to the Tribune.

Sister Parish was at home in Maine when she piled armfuls of invoices, samples and correspondence relating to a single client into an old-fashioned, hard-walled suitcase with satin lining and pockets. Working around the brass locks and leather handle, she wrote in her own childlike hand: WHITE HOUSE 6/15/67.

Then she called the caretaker to take it away.

Until her death in 1994 at age 84, Sister Parish was known as the First Lady of American Decorating, a title won by her adoption of the chintzy look associated with English country houses, her trendsetting use of domestic handicrafts and a roster of patrons with names like Astor and Whitney.

As the contents of the above suitcase attest, the list also included a late American president and the wife he was obliged to acknowledge as being as famous as he was ("I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris.")

Sister Parish made headlines in 1961 simply by giving the Kennedys private living quarters in the White House that answered their quotidian and quite basic needs.

While working on a history of the firm she headed with her partner, Albert Hadley, Parish recalled that the Executive Mansion she and the Kennedys inherited was a stained and tattered disgrace. Their joint reaction to it fell just short of revulsion.

"Changes in White House Will Allow Private Cooking, Late Snacks," announced a Midwest daily newspaper, referring to the kitchen, pantry and dining room Parish added to the family unit on the second floor. (Former First Children had to go downstairs to the kitchen that serviced the State Dining Room for a glass of milk.)

Where once Mamie Eisenhower's mother slept, there was now a restaurant-issue stove.

Parish also sounded the alarm in State Rooms filled with reproduction furniture, provenance B. Altman, the now-defunct New York department store. "A melange of pathetic, unsalable castoffs," Mrs. Kennedy sniffed.

Thanks in large part to Parish, the early motor driving a committee charged with raising money and making acquisitions, the castoffs were tossed out. "Everything in the White House must have a reason for being there," said Mrs. Kennedy. "It would be a sacrilege merely to redecorate--a word I hate--It must be restored."

Letters between the two women were uncovered during my collaboration with Parish and her partner, Albert Hadley, on the recently published "Parish-Hadley: Sixty Years of American Design" (Little, Brown and Co., $50). The correspondence details Parish's and Mrs. Kennedy's working relationship as well as the latter's hands-on involvement in the restoration.

In Parish, the First Lady found the right, blinkered lieutenant to cleanse the public rooms of their Grand Rapids reconditioned tables and Pullman car ashtrays. A lot of the work was ridiculously elemental, like rehanging curtains inside rather than outside moldings.

But in what would become a hurricane of controversy, Stephane Boudin of Paris was assigned to actually decorate the State Rooms, not Parish.

"It was the beginning of a wonderful new White House--then they brought in all those French people," Parish said acidly. Because he was not American, Boudin was obliged to play a (transparently) covert role.

The last vestige of that coverup is blown in an exhibit, "A Frenchman in Camelot: The Decoration of the Kennedy White House by Stephane Boudin," which closed recently at Boscobel, a historic property in Garrison, N.Y. As a result of all the maneuvering, the whole White House/Jackie Kennedy experience left Parish deeply, eternally embittered.

"Sister Parish was obviously the quiet, conservative, chicest designer on the New York scene," says Letitia Baldrige, Mrs. Kennedy's first press secretary. "She had never had enormous press, but everyone knew she was the best. The people Jackie looked to, like Jayne Wrightsman, helped decide on Mrs. Parish, but Jackie didn't really have to be told. She and Sister were pals. They had tea together, though Jackie also loved Boudin. He was pushed on her by Mrs. Wrightsman."

J.K. to S.P.: "I want our private quarters to be heaven for us naturally--but use as much of (the Eisenhowers') stuff as possible & buy as little new--as I want to spend lots of my budget below in the public rooms--which people see & will do you & I proud!"

Parish's first working visit to the White House took place three days after the inauguration. After battling the famous inaugural blizzard from New York, she finally pulled into Washington in the middle of the night, only to have her car conk out in a snow drift. "It was stuffed with samples but I had to abandon it," she remembered. The samples were recovered the next day.

No clues about some things

More bad weather made cars in Washington scarce. "Naturally Mrs. Kennedy did not realize there were 40 cars waiting for her to ask what she'd like done with them" Parish said. "Naturally, I did not know there were 40 cars waiting to pick me up. In the end, I hired one to take me to our appointment."